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US history
Course: US history > Unit 1
Lesson 2: Before contact- Native American societies before contact
- Native American culture of the Southwest
- Native American culture of the West
- Native American culture of the Northeast
- Native American culture of the Southeast
- Native American culture of the Plains
- Lesson summary: Native American societies before contact
- Native American societies before contact
- Native American societies before European contact
- Pre-colonization European society
- African societies and the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade
- European and African societies before contact
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Native American culture of the Plains
Indigenous people on the Plains farmed and hunted, living both nomadically and in established villages.
Overview
- Plains Native Americans lived in both sedentary and nomadic communities.
- They farmed corn, hunted, and gathered, establishing diverse lifestyles and healthy diets.
- When horses arrived on the Plains along with the Spanish colonizers, or conquistadores, they disrupted agricultural norms and intensified hunting competition between Native American groups.
Geographic and temporal setting: across the flatlands
The Plains region spreads to the east of the Rocky Mountains, up to 400 miles across the flat land of the center of the present-day United States. The Plains were very sparsely populated until about 1100 CE, when Native American groups including Pawnees, Mandans, Omahas, Wichitas, Cheyennes, and other groups started to inhabit the area.
The climate supported limited farming closer to the major waterways but ultimately became most fruitful for hunting large and small game.
Common food practices: introduction of corn, but shifts back to hunting and gathering
Plains Native Americans planted the three sisters—beans, squash, and corn—as they arrived from the Southwest around 900 CE. Agriculture was most commonly practiced and most fruitful along rivers. Plains inhabitants also harvested plants for medicinal purposes; for example, chokecherries were thought to cure stomach sickness. Women farmed and gathered, while men hunted. Hunting became a more dominant practice when a drought struck in the 1300s.
Indigenous people hunted large animals early as 12,000 BCE. They practiced a mixture of agriculture and hunting on foot, using large spears with Clovis points at the end. Clovis points, sharp points carved out of stone, have been now discovered all across North America. Archaeologists estimate that a spear with a Clovis point at the end could kill animals the size of African elephants, corroborating the idea that Native Americans used these two-centimeter spearpoints to hunt massive animals like mammoths, buffalo, and bison.
Horses did not arrive in North America until 1519, when they were introduced by the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés. Cortés brought about 600 horses to the region throughout his expeditions. Later, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and Juan de Oñate would bring more. When horses became widely available in the 1600s, Lakotas and Cheyennes gave up agriculture altogether to become nomadic buffalo-hunters.
Societal organization: sedentary, and then nomadic
In earlier, more agrarian societies, Native Americans on the Plains would set up sedentary bases in earth lodges. Highly agrarian groups, like the Wichitas, built grass homes near their crops. In the eastern part of the Plains, where the Hidatsa and Mandan peoples cultivated maize, they established trade networks along the Mississippi River. They made bull boats by stretching bison skin over a wooden frame to trade goods along the rivers. They traded elaborate baskets and leather for metal and furs from the Northeast.
As Native Americans on the Plains became more focused on hunting, they became more nomadic. They constructed teepees—conical tents made out of buffalo skin and wood—shelters that were easy to put up and take down if a band was following a buffalo herd for hunting. Sometimes, Native Americans on the Plains lived in a combination of nomadic and sedentary settings: they would plant crops and establish villages in the spring, hunt in the summer, harvest their crops in the fall, and hunt in the winter.
Social and religious norms: competition and trade puts pressure on social order
These hunting-agrarian groups were mostly divided at the level of the band. A band could consist of a dozen to a few hundred people who lived, hunted, and traveled together. Often, bands would unite in a village setting to farm or hunt a large herd of bison. Villages usually had fluid populations and little to no political structure.
It is nearly impossible to generalize the religious traditions of the Plains region since every group had its own practices. Rituals often revolved around the sun and nature, with the Earth as the mother of all spirits. Cheyennes, for example, performed the Sun Dance, which forced people to sacrifice something personal for communal benefit. Lakotas believed that certain individuals were blessed to be spiritual leaders or medicine men. Indigenous people on the Plains regarded the buffalo and their migration patterns as sacred.
With the introduction of horses, Plains societies became less egalitarian; the men with the most horses had the most political impact, social status, and economic power. As European colonists arrived, the Sioux, in particular, began to trade with them. They received guns and horses in exchange for buffalo robes, blankets, and beads.
Intertribal conflict increased due to this heightened competition, with groups stealing each others' horses for economic gain and glory. This began a pattern of violence between the Native American groups and Euro-American colonists as they settled across the Plains during the centuries to come.
What do you think?
Consider the teepee and the earth lodge. How do different living structures across the Plains reflect the cultural practices of Native Americans?
How did the introduction of horses change Native American life?
Why do you think some Native Americans organized in larger groups or villages, while others operated in small bands?
Want to join the conversation?
What does agrarian and egalitarian mean?(24 votes)
An agrarian is a social or political movement designed to bring about land reforms or to improve the economic status of farmer.
An egalitarian is a person who believe in the equality of all people and egalitarian society gives everyone equal right.(24 votes)
The Teepees got kind of a big hole on the top of them. How would that protect the indian that lived there against the weather, like rain or snow?(17 votes)- The opening also served as a "chimney" to let smoke out when a fire was going.(11 votes)
Where’s the Bering Strait, and what does it have to do with the history of the North American continent?(11 votes)
The Bering Strait separates Alaska and Russia. There is a lot of debate about how it plays a role in history. Some people believe the Bering Strait was once so dry that people could walk from Russia to Alaska. This is how some people believe North and South America became inhabited, but it's only speculation. We don't know for sure what happened.(19 votes)
I thought when the Spanish colonizers came to the plains they brought back diseases that the Indians had never been exposed to, which killed a lot of them. That wasn't mentioned in the article, but that is true right?(10 votes)
Yeah, that's true. The diseases they had never been exposed to would necessarily harm them a lot.(10 votes)
What is the significance of the the Bering Strait?(8 votes)
The Bering Strait allows sea navigation between the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. That's one significance. Did you want more?(12 votes)
- how did the beans benefit the other two plants?(6 votes)
- Beans usually host nitrogen-fixing bacteria in nodes in their roots, so they actually made the soil more fertile for the other two plants.(12 votes)
what are the "three sisters"(3 votes)- The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Native American groups in North America: winter squash, maize (corn), and climbing beans (typically tepary beans or common beans). Originating in Mexico, these three crops were carried northward, up the river valleys over generations of time, far afield to the Mandan and Iroquois who, among others, used these "Three Sisters" as trade goods.(11 votes)
- what were the agrarian groups called?(4 votes)
The agrarian groups were a myriad of tribes that survived off of crops and agriculture and were sedentary, rather living off of nomadic hunting. There isn't a classification other than agrarian, because all these different tribes were, well, different. Agrarian only describes an aspect of their lifestyle.(7 votes)
- did they have pets back then? (not counting horses)(4 votes)
- Yes! They had dogs. Dogs came to North America along with the indigenous people who migrated here, more than 15,000 years ago!(5 votes)
- I am confused about the questions at the end of the article:
"Consider the teepee and the earth lodge. How do different living structures across the Plains reflect the cultural practices of Native Americans?"
and
"Why do you think some Native Americans organized in larger groups or villages, while others operated in small bands?"
I don't see how the different types of living structures are a reflection of cultural practices; very little about their culture is discussed in the article. From what I can tell, their significance is just that earth lodges were more permanent and sedentary, and that teepees were preferred when Plains Indians decided to move around more.
With the second question, I'm at a loss as to what the advantages of operating in small bands are. My guess is that they are easier to keep united, and also easier to migrate around with throughout the year, due to their size. Is this the answer they're looking for?(6 votes)